The historically dry conditions at the Oak Ridge Reservoir in Morris County has revealed a link to the past: the old stone bridge used by stagecoaches on the original roadbed of the Paterson-Hamburg Turnpike.
The rarely seen “ghost bridge” is usually covered by water, but is now visible from the Route 23 side of the reservoir. And despite signs warning people to “Keep Out,” the ghost bridge has been luring curiosity-seekers onto the parched reservoir to shoot pictures and videos.
What they’re standing on is a piece of the original Paterson-Hamburg Turnpike, a toll road created by the New Jersey Legislature that ran from Acquackanonk Landing (now Passaic) into Paterson and up through the hills to Hamburg in what is now Sussex County.
“It’s impressive,” said Dan Barr, the Hamburg town historian who visited recently. Barr said the arch design can hold the most weight, and it was quite a feat to cull the stone blocks and set them into place.
“It was really a massive undertaking just to harvest those stones,” he said.
Barr, 62, said this is not the first time he’s seen the ghost bridge. He recalled other drawn downs during dry spells, but right now, “the reservoir is bone dry,” he said.
No one is quite sure when the bridge was built, but the Paterson-Hamburg Turnpike dates to 1806, when the New Jersey Legislature authorized the creation of a toll road linking the emerging cities in the east to the mines and farming hamlets to the west.
Barr said an early Hamburg settler, Thomas Lawrence, gathered other investors to build the turnpike, which was finished in 1810. The turnpike opened up commerce between the mining and farm communities in and around Hamburg and Paterson.
“It was horse and carriage,” Barr said, and stagecoach. Passaic County historian Edward A. Smyk has written about the stagecoach that rumbled up the turnpike and across the bridge, delivering people, along with the mail.
“It was a profit-making enterprise,” Smyk said of the toll road. “That’s the lynchpin of our society: profit. That’s what inspires people to do things.”
“It was a 40-mile bumpy ride from Paterson,” Smyk said. In 1860, the state legislature cancelled the toll and made the turnpike into a public highway, which today is Route 23.
The railroad arrived after the Civil War, offering a faster way to move goods and a more comfortable ride. The rapidly-growing cities to the east – Paterson, Newark, Jersey City – all needed more water, and eyed the crystal clear mountain streams of the Highlands Region.
In the late 1880s, the Paterson-based East Jersey Water Company began buying up land in the Pequannock River basin to carve out the five reservoirs that today are owned and operated by the City of Newark.
The ghost bridge and a portion of the Paterson-Hamburg Turnpike was submerged when workers carved out the Oak Ridge Reservoir, which went online in 1891. The Clinton Reservoir was completed around that time, and a few years later, the Canistear.
“Newark will have its new water supply Dec. 1,” the Jersey City News reported in its Aug. 26, 1891 edition, “and there is great rejoicing among the people at the prospect of exchanging pure and wholesome water for the vile and poisonous Passaic River.”
But a year later, there were complaints of red mud dredged up from the reservoir bottom. “The water that Newarkers found gliding from the faucets yesterday was of a ruddy color, only a trifle milder in appearance than good rye whiskey,” The Paterson News reported on Aug. 20, 1892.
The newspapers reported the City of Newark was contracted to buy the reservoirs from the East Jersey Water Company for $ to $6 million. The city has operated them ever since.
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Richard Cowen may be reached at [email protected].